Is it possible to eradicate malaria? It is a question with which many researchers have grappled, and many ideas have been proposed. The reason malaria has garnered so much attention is that it is one of the deadliest diseases, infecting 200 million people and killing more than 500,000 annually, with infants in Africa suffering the majority of fatalities.

When the Ebola virus struck West Africa in 2014, it resisted early attempts at control. It took more than two years to overcome, claiming more than 11,000 lives. Volunteers from the West who were infected were flown home and treated with experimental therapies, while those on the ground in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea were treated in camps set up to deal with the disease.

Scientists have developed a way to replicate the Zika virus, stripping it of the genes that make the virus infectious, an advance that may lower the safety risk involved in working with it and pave the way for vaccine development.